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Philadelphia Inquirer - Christie v. Court: Is threat for real?
He has considered ignoring N.J. justices if they order more school funding. Legal scholars said that would be a historic breach.
Star Ledger - If N.J. Supreme Court orders increased school aid, Gov. Christie says not complying is among 'options'
The Record - Doblin: Cerf and turf in the state Senate
Statehouse Bureau (Record, Star Ledger) - If N.J. Supreme Court orders increased school aid, Gov. Christie says not complying is among 'options'
Friday, April 22, 2011
BY GINGER GIBSON, STATE HOUSE BUREAU
TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie said last night that he hasn’t ruled out defying the state Supreme Court if it orders him to spend more money on poor public school students.
During the “Ask the Governor” radio program on New Jersey 101.5, Christie was asked whether he could just ignore the court if it ruled against him — a prospect that could compel him to restore up to $1.7 billion in school aid.
“That’s an option,” Christie replied. “I’m not going to sit here and speculate. … There are a whole bunch of options in the contingency plan.”
Christie spokesman Kevin Roberts last night would not say how seriously the governor is considering not complying.
Christie went on the attack against the state Supreme Court, a day after it heard oral arguments about whether he violated the state constitution by cutting public school funding last year.
Christie also took aim at Associate Justice Barry Albin, singling him out as an example of how “judges have lost their sense of place in our democracy.”
During the court’s arguments over the state’s obligation to its poorest students, Albin asked twice about the decision to not renew a “millionaires tax” to raise revenue.
Christie, during the radio show, said Albin sounded more like a “candidate for governor” than a “tenured judge.”
“He was advocating yesterday to put his hand in the pockets of the taxpayer of New Jersey, take money out of it and determine himself how that money should be spent,” Christie said.
Paul Tractenberg, a Rutgers law professor and founder of the Education Law Center, which filed the lawsuit challenging the cuts, said Christie’s comments go far beyond the usual grumbling about the court’s decisions.
“I don’t think governors have ever said flat-out they were thinking of ignoring a court order,” he said. “We’d be in uncharted terrain … We essentially convert government into a dictatorship.”
Robert Williams, a Rutgers School of Law-Camden professor, said ignoring the court would prompt a constitutional crisis.
He said Christie has a track record of being hostile to the court.
“He’s campaigned against the court,” he said.
Winnie Comfort, spokeswoman for the judiciary, declined to comment about the possibility of Christie defying the court and said Albin declined to respond to the governor.
If he loses the case and opts to comply with the ruling, Christie predicted possible Draconian cuts, including closing hospitals and laying off firefighters and cops.
“I will not raise taxes under any circumstances,” he said.
Through spending cuts, Christie said there is a finite number of places he could go, such as hospital and municipal aid.
“You will see many hospitals across New Jersey close within a month,” Christie said of the possibility of cutting hospital aid. “They won’t be able to survive,”
Sen. Loretta Weinberg (DBergen) said Christie doesn’t have to cut aid to hospitals if he loses the school funding case.
“He can state he has no choice, but he does have other choices. The millionaires tax is an obvious one,” she said.
Philadelphia Inquirer - Christie v. Court: Is threat for real?
He has considered ignoring N.J. justices if they order more school funding. Legal scholars said that would be a historic breach.
By Matt Katz
Inquirer Trenton Bureau
Just how powerful is he?
Gov. Christie said last week that he had mulled defying a possible order from New Jersey's Supreme Court to restore funding to schools.
The statement, on a call-in radio show, left legal scholars wondering whether this was the Republican governor just spouting threats and bluster - or foreshadowing an unprecedented break with tradition.
If Christie ignores the ruling, scholars said, he could be ruled in contempt of court and personally fined, he could be impeached for violating his oath of office, or he could trigger a constitutional crisis and the statewide closing of schools.
Or maybe nothing would result, and voters would be left to decide whether to reelect a governor who overruled the highest court in his state in the name of fiscal prudence.
To the Rutgers University faculty member who founded the group suing for more school funding, such defiance is so unfathomable it calls to mind the Arkansas governor who, 54 years ago, ignored the U.S. Supreme Court order to integrate public schools.
"In our system, one branch doesn't say to another: 'Sorry, you have acted in your authority, but I don't like your actions, so I don't have to follow it,' " said professor Paul Tractenberg. "Christie might not be literally standing in the schoolhouse doors and blocking them, but he's doing something very" similar.
The current case had its origins nearly 40 years ago. The nonprofit Education Law Center sued the state for more money for poor schools, saying equitable funding was a right under the state constitution because of a provision, approved by voters in 1875, mandating a "thorough and efficient" education.
Christie has argued that the resulting court rulings, known as Abbott decisions, have been a failure because poor districts get a disproportionate amount of state funding - and spend far more per student - yet still have abysmal graduation rates and standardized test scores.
In 2010, to close a yawning budget deficit, Christie eliminated $1 billion in school funding. He restored just $250 million in his proposed budget for the fiscal year that will begin in July.
Money, he argues, doesn't ensure students a good education. Instead, Christie has proposed to improve the lot of impoverished students by expanding charter schools, tying teacher tenure to students' academic performance, and rewarding educators in poor schools with higher salaries.
The Education Law Center has sued, saying the 2010 cuts violated the funding requirement set by the courts. Peter G. Verniero, a former Supreme Court justice who represents the Christie administration, has argued that the court must respect the separation of powers and allow the Legislature to handle spending.
In a decision expected in the coming weeks, the Supreme Court could mandate that Christie fork over as much as $1.7 billion. Its ruling could not be appealed to federal court.
If forced to pay, Christie said last week, he would not, "under any circumstances," raise taxes on an overtaxed public. He could cut spending, he said, but that would lead to the immediate closure of "many" hospitals, the layoff of police officers, and major cuts to Medicaid.
"These are ugly, ugly choices," he said Thursday night on the Ask the Governor show on New Jersey 101.5 FM.
The host then asked Christie if he could simply ignore the court's ruling.
"Well," he responded, "that's an option, too. . . . Have I thought of that? Of course I have."
Since he campaigned for office, Christie has railed against the court not only for its school-funding rulings but also for its requirements that municipalities provide affordable housing for the poor.
Judges "sound more like they're running for governor than trying to be a judge on a bench," he said on the radio show.
He called out Justice Barry T. Albin, who during a hearing on school funding last week brought up Christie's refusal to reinstate a so-called millionaire's tax, which some Democrats have said could help fund the schools.
"I've got to wonder what a nonelected justice of the Supreme Court - in the case that's supposed to be talking about constitutional issues - is doing bringing up any tax and advocating the raising of any tax . . . and then also declaring how that money should be spent once it's raised," Christie said.
Albin, he added, is a "perfect example of how unelected lifetime judges in our state have lost their sense of place in our democracy."
Taxes were brought up because of the inherent conflict in the school-funding case, said Rutgers-Camden law professor Robert F. Williams.
On one hand, New Jersey has a constitutional requirement to balance its budget, so available money supersedes spending mandates. On the other hand, the lack of money is, in part, a political decision that can be rectified by raising taxes or cutting spending.
Elected officials have repeatedly failed to reconcile this issue. In that sense, they have defied the court in much the same way that Christie has threatened, leaving justices to grapple with the Abbott case decade after decade, said David S. Cohen, professor at the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University.
"This is one of the big issues when the judiciary gets involved in major societal reform," Cohen said.
"As much as [justices] may have a correct interpretation of the state constitution and have the right legal and moral argument . . . they can't march into Christie's office or the Legislature and say, 'Do this or else,' " he said.
The only similar instance occurred in 1976, when the Legislature defied the court's orders in a related case on increasing school funding, resulting in the statewide closing of schools.
Fortunately, it was July, and in short order lawmakers and the governor passed the state's income tax to raise the needed money.
Christie's threat is taken seriously because he has shown a willingness to reject precedent. Last year, he did not reappoint Supreme Court Justice John Wallace Jr., a political moderate and the court's only African American. Instead he nominated a lawyer, Anne Patterson, whom the Democratic-controlled Senate won't confirm. It was the first time since New Jersey ratified its new constitution in 1947 that a justice had been denied tenure after a seven-year probationary period.
Former Republican Gov. Tom Kean once called a justice "communistic," according to Williams, yet renominated him because to do otherwise would "interfere with the independence of the court."
Kean didn't want justices to look "over their shoulders."
Now justices are "walking on eggshells," said Rutgers-Newark law professor Frank Askin. One justice, Helen E. Hoens, will be up for tenure during Christie's current term and is therefore "under the gun," Askin said.
Could the governor's statement last week just be a means of intimidation? And could the court's ruling show it worked?
"We will never know the answer to that question," Williams said, "but everyone will speculate about it, either way."
Contact staff writer Matt Katz at 609-217-8355, mkatz@phillynews.com or @mattkatz00 on Twitter. Read the "Christie Chronicles" blog at philly.com/christiechronicles.
The Record - Doblin: Cerf and turf in the state Senate
Monday, April 25, 2011
By ALFRED P. DOBLIN
RECORD EDITORIAL COLUMNIST
ACTING Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf has a turf problem. Fertilizer won't help. Cerf lives in Montclair. Montclair is in Essex County. And state Sen. Ron Rice, D-Essex, has senatorial courtesy over nominees from his turf.
Senatorial courtesy is part of the Senate "tool kit" of obstruction. Sometimes it can be used to obstruct a bad nomination. In Cerf's case, state senators do not know whether he is a good or poor choice because there have been no hearings.
Rice wants Cerf to address the Joint Committee on the Public Schools, but there's a dispute over whether that is appropriate before Cerf appears before the Judiciary Committee. But if Rice drops his hold on Cerf's nomination and he appears before the Judiciary Committee, it is likely he will be approved by the committee before Rice gets to make his thunder. You would have to catch a production of "West Side Story" to see a more choreographed turf war.
In an editorial board meeting last week with The Record, both Cerf and Governor Christie spoke of their goals for reforming public education. If the governor had one message for the editorial board, it was to remind it that no movement has been made on either Cerf's nomination or Anne Patterson's nomination to the state Supreme Court.
Christie said historically there has always been bipartisan agreement that a governor should have the Cabinet of his choice. He is correct. There is no legitimate reason to block Cerf from a hearing. If the hearing would show conflicts of interest that would impede his ability to do his job, that's the place to expose them. What's happening now is petty politics.
Democrats will point out that historically governors also renominate justices to the state Supreme Court. Former Gov. Tom Kean Sr. eloquently set that bar by saying he would not let his personal politics get in the way of deciding who would remain on the court. The state constitution is not so lofty. It gives the governor the right to make his own choice after the conclusion of an initial seven-year term on the bench.
Not nominating Justice John Wallace to the court was a poor decision, but it was Christie's decision to make. He nominated Patterson to the court almost exactly one year ago today. Nothing has happened.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, has promised not to hold Patterson hearings until after Wallace's 70th birthday next year. That is when Wallace would have been constitutionally required to retire. Sweeney appears unlikely to blink.
Meanwhile, Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto has made it known that he will not seek renomination. His chances of winning Senate approval were near zero. Until he leaves in September, Rivera-Soto has said he will pick and choose the cases he votes on. Christie should call for the part-time, full-time, sometime jurist to resign immediately for failure to do his duty. But on this score, the usually vociferous Christie is mum.
In the interim, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner named a fill-in judge, Edwin Stern, to help with the caseload. That caseload includes a new education-related case, heard last week. The court will decide whether the Christie administration can legally cut education funding to its current levels. This ruling will have massive repercussions, and as Christie noted last week, it could be decided by a justice who was neither nominated by a governor nor vetted by the state Senate.
This is what happens when politics trump policy. Republicans and Democrats will easily agree that reforming public education and reducing the property tax burden of funding public education are the top priorities of all New Jerseyans. Not having a full state Supreme Court and a confirmed commissioner of education is going to make both of those tasks harder.
The internal Senate politics that are keeping Cerf from being vetted by the Judiciary Committee must stop. Education reform is too important. The same is true for the state's high court. A full court of justices nominated by governors and vetted by the state Senate is not a luxury; it is a necessity.
Whether Wallace should still be on the bench is not a debate New Jersey can afford to continue. A decision was made. If Patterson is a poor choice as a replacement, the Senate should find that out now, not next year.
The same is true of Cerf. Just because his house is on Rice's political turf should not be a reason to keep him from a hearing. I guess one alternative would be for Cerf to move. A better one would be for state senators to finally move on.
Alfred P. Doblin is the editorial page editor of The Record. Contact him at doblin@northjersey.com. Follow AlfredPDoblin on Twitter.
